Plastic data cards are well known and include ATM card, credit cards, employee card and so on. Advances in technology have increased the data and processing capacity of such devices and rendered them more compact.
USB devices are also common and are used for peripheral devices such as a mouse, a keypad, a printer and similar devices. USB tokens are widely used as means to store, retrieve and transfer information from one computer to another. Other tokens are used to authenticate a user, or to create digital signature. Various versions of self-powered card are emerging.
WO 0169881 (Drabczuk et al.) published Sep. 20, 2001 and entitled “Method of communication between a smart card and a host station” discloses a card-like portable article having a microcontroller that communicates in accordance with a first communication protocol and a USB interface for converting commands in accordance with the first communication protocol into commands in accordance with a second communication protocol and vice versa.
WO 03027946 (Elbaz et al.) published Apr. 3, 2003 and entitled “Dongle which is intended to be connected to a port of a telecommunications device” describes an electronic key device manufactured using chip card manufacturing techniques and having a USB connector.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,813,164 and 6,900,988 (Yen) published Feb. 12, 2004 and entitled “Low height USB interface connecting device and a memory storage apparatus thereof” describes a connecting device with a low height that comprises a connector part, and a set of metal terminals. The connector part has a height compatible with the height of an inner space in a standard USB interface slot socket so as to be inserted into the standard USB interface slot socket.
US 2004/0033726 (Kao) published Feb. 19, 2004 and entitled “Plug used for connection with a USB receptacle” describes a plug used for connection with a USB receptacle. The plug contains a plurality of metal contacts for contacting metal contacts of the USB receptacle when the plug is connected thereto. The plug has a thickness that is smaller than an ordinary USB plug, so it can be utilized by computer peripherals that have a thickness less than an ordinary USB plug.
US 2004/0102093 (Huang) published May 27, 2003 and entitled “Electronic device having a USB connector” describes an electronic device having a circuit board and a USB connector mounted on the circuit board. The USB connector includes a body portion, at least one contact pad, and a frame, in which the body portion is integrally formed on the circuit board and the contact pad is formed on the body portion, and the frame is attached to the body portion and mounted on the circuit board in a manner of surrounding the body portion.
WO 0148994 published Jul. 5, 2001 and entitled “Method and circuit for protection of a universal serial bus transceiver against short circuit” describes means to protect a USB circuit against short circuit using a comparison circuit configured to detect a shortcut to one or more predetermined voltage sources. Such an approach requires dedicated software to compare drive and transmit signals.
FIG. 1 shows a typical prior art USB connector assembly comprising a female part (receptacle) that is generally in the form of a rectangular outer frame 10 having internal resilient leaves 11 that press against the outer surface of a complementary male USB connector thereby maintaining the two connectors tightly coupled. A contact strip shown as 12 has depending therefrom four primary electrical contacts VBUS, D−, D+ and GND for connecting thereto the positive voltage rail, positive and negative data lines and ground, respectively. A shaped slot 13 accommodates a complementary shaped protrusion of the male USB connector, which has a rectangular outer frame 14 such that peripheral contacts on an outer surface thereof engage the corresponding contacts on the connector strip 12. The connector strip 12 is closer to the upper edge of the frame 10 of the receptacle than to its lower edge. Consequently, the male USB connector can be entered in one orientation only.
FIG. 1 is not drawn to scale and in practice both the male and female USB connectors offer a very narrow profile so that it is not easy at first glance to determine in which orientation to hold the male USB connector prior to inserting it into the receptacle, this difficulty being compounded when the receptacle is not easily visible as is often the case when USB ports are accessed from a rear of the computer.
As the industry progresses towards reducing the thickness and increasing the portability of the discussed USB tokens several problems arise:    1. It is often difficult to insert card size tokens having USB plugs into USB receptacles. For example other devices may be already plugged nearby, and laptops may not have enough space between the USB receptacle and the table for the length of the card.    2. The prevailing manufacturing method for current tokens is assembly which suits thicker devices. While it is known that thin devices may be manufactured using a milling process, the resulting size of the device limits the capacity of the electronic circuitry that can be supported thereby.    3. Cards having USB plugs offer a very narrow profile and owing to the fact that they are not maintained asymmetrically within a surrounding frame as described above with reference to FIG. 1 they can be physically inserted in either direction into the USB receptacle. Of course, if the card is inserted incorrectly, the USB contacts of the card will engage the complementary contacts of the receptacle. But worse than this there exists then the danger that the USB VBUS contacts of the card will contact the resilient leaves 11 which are usually metallic and are coupled to GND via the rectangular frame to which they are connected. This would cause the VBUS contacts to short to GND and must be avoided.
Turning to card-like devices, present credit card sized devices having an internal battery do not include means for recharging the battery and are hence limit to either low current electronics, short usage time or both.
USB is an acronym for Universal Serial Bus, which has been become the universal standard for connecting peripherals to computer motherboards. Although the invention will be described with particular reference to the USB standard, it is to be understood that the principles of the invention are equally applicable to other standards and particularly to connectors having different contact arrangements than the USB standard. It is therefore to be understood that the invention both as described and as claimed is not intended to be limited to any specific standard and the more generic term “flexibly connectable computer systems” abbreviated as FCCS will be used to denote any interface standard for allowing devices to be connected to a computer.
There is therefore a need for a male FCCS connector that can be inserted either way into a FCCS receptacle so as to overcome the constraints of known connectors such as USB connectors.